An About Turn
by Kamitra
Summary: Reversing the order of events does more than change the past... it changes the future. Pearl may have started it, but perhaps she didn't finish it.


Notes: Usual disclaimers as everyone else. Assume spoilers for all cases.

**An About Turn**

_First._

They never met. They went happily about their lives, until death. And death came early.

It was because of this, that she decided to change things.

---

_Second._

_Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth Chooses Death._

This never changed, no matter what happened, no matter what was done. How many times did things go wrong?

At first, it was murder, or assisted suicide. It was hard to say, but the outcome of it was that an already crushed man was driven to extremes after this, and a lonely girl, already a teenager by now, was convicted of a murder she did not commit. After a while, it became to be known as the first of a serial murder, when people mysteriously died involving the case. People assumed it was because she had spiritual powers. First it was the prosecutor. Then the witness. Then the officer. Then her mother.

Pearl Fey had a reputation for murder. It wasn't unfounded.

And so, she hid her mother's plans for revenge.

_First._

They met, but it was only just this once. Just once, before everyone began to die.

---

_Third._

Phoenix Wright's first case ended miserably.

He would have been the first suspect too, if someone had not beaten him to the punch. That is, his defendant. His first client.

He was lucky that he himself had not been found guilty for the murder of Mia Fey, his mentor.

Jobless, homeless, distraught, he found himself at the foot of the Kurain Temple when it all began and ended. This is how he met Pearl Fey, who took him in as an acolyte. Together, one day, they visted Hazakura for further training. There, she found a note from her mother.

This time too, Miles Edgeworth would prosecute the case only to die, leaving a suicide note.

Knowing her mother, Pearl Fey switched her magatama with Maya Fey's before she left to meet her sister.

_Second._

_Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth Chooses Death._

This never changed. No matter how much time had changed, how many mistakes she undid, this was the only constant. Not even her own existence was constant. Where once before she was a cynical and disillusioned girl, she was now an even younger girl full of sweetness and light. Her mother, it turned out, had sheltered her after failing with her older sisters. Sisters she didn't have, before.

Phoenix Wright was surprised to find out that this prosecutor that supposedly had been murdered (the note was apparently meant to be a suicide note, but the perpetrator had been found guilty) was actually a classmate of his back in grade school. He felt rather guilty of the fact that supposedly, this downward spiral began because he had lost his first case to him.

And so, he wasn't too surprised to find out that someone came to take revenge on him.

_First_.

They had apparently had all met before, but didn't know it. People died, people lived. All of this was done without any particular remarks.

--

_Fourth._

Although not everyone knew it, Phoenix Wright never forgot a favor.

Not may knew it, perhaps, becuase he didn't get very many.

And so, when a beautiful girl with red hair and fair skin told him he was cute and gave him a bottle, he gladly wore it every day since then. He knew she may have just been pulling his leg in the beginning, but recently it looked as if she was really starting to like him. Not many did.

And so, when Mia Fey defended him against the girlfriend that set him up for murder, he never forgot the favor and vowed to become a defense attorney. She worried for him, but he assured her that he could handle it. Still, she refused to give him any cases of his own until he gathered more experience as her assistant. As a result, his very first case was only so because she was dead.

Technically, he was still in training.

As a result, when he was offered a position under brightest up-coming defense attorney named Kristoph Gavin, he took it, and Maya followed him. Together, they were undefeated until the Graymare case. The whole thing was a mess and the new prosecutor tore his case apart until there was nothing left. Distraught, he quit and sought employment elsewhere.

Seven years later, he was shot and killed. Out of a lack of evidence, Pearl Fey was asked to channel in order to find out who killed him, only to be disgraced when he pointed a dead man, Zak Graymare. The real murderer? His daughter, Trucy.

Just because he never forgot a favor didn't mean he did anyone else any.

She made sure Trucy's adoption papers were filled out.

_Third._

Phoenix Wright's first case was to defend Maya Fey. He succeeded the first time, but not the second.

It was during this second case that he learned of why his mentor had always been so determined, yet so sad. It turned out that she had actually wanted to be a prosecutor after her lover was killed by that murdering bitch -- his ex-girlfriend -- but his determination to follow in her footsteps kept her from swtiching sides and gave her a new direction in life. She told him about her mother had disgraced the family when she was still a child, and to investigate she became a lawyer when she found out that she wasn't cut out for police work.

She told him all this when he had told her he was going to get rid of his badge after failing to protect her sister as he had promised. She told him that the past is not yet written in stone, although he didn't understand what she could possibly mean by that.

It was due to that cryptic message that he decided to try again at protecting people. He figured it would be a start at paying off his debts.

_Second_.

_Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth Chooses Death._

This never changed. No matter how much death had been avoided or reoccured, this had always stayed the same. What was different, this time, though, was that he didn't actually die. He wasn't murdered and he didn't suicide. He had simply left to regain his bearings after the case with Lana Skye. To Pearl Fey, the changes were irreversible. She was different now and so was everyone else. Phoenix wasn't even close to the bum that she picked up off the porch of the shrine or the cynical man that he was when she channeled him. Prosecutor Edgeworth was also different, but she couldn't place how yet. Mia looked as if she was becoming worse.

How much more were people going to change?

Even though they were almost friends by now, Phoenix got the feeling that he knew Edgeworth from somewhere, before. Like the had an association from long ago. And so, he was rather miffed that Edgeworth hadn't even left any sort of message or contact when he dropped off the face of the earth when he pulled that stunt.

They had made a good team, anwyay, and even Lana said so. They had gotten close during Edgeworth's time as a defendant and had a working relationship by the time Lana's trial had occurred. Although it wasn't only Edgeworth that felt the heat during that trial (Phoenix had gotten a lot of dirty setups thanks to Chief Gant), he managed to pull it together and keep working, while Edgeworth... did this.

The next time he saw him, he congratulated himself on not strangling him.

_First._

They knew each other, but their paths had never totally crossed. Some died before then, and others lived long enough to separate.

--

_Fourth, Redone._

It was the third time Dahlia Hawthorne had been on the stand, and this time, it was personal.

Mia Fey had tossed her attorney badge in just to prosecute this case. They allowed her the special privledge because they knew that Diego Armando had worked with her previously, and thus, had a vested interest in seeing this through. Even Edgeworth, who had prosecuted the first case Dahlia was involved with, was approving of the switch. They finally managed to nail that necklace of hers as the murder weapon and after much cornering, got her convicted.

After that, she stayed as a prosecutor under Lana and encouraged Phoenix, who had just gotten his badge and was employed under Grossberg Law Offices, to stay where he was. It turned out she needed him to protect Maya for her, when she had died almost finishing putting together a case against Redd White.

He managed to make it through and started his own firm after he discovered what happened. His ties, however, to the prosecution became so strong that by the time Lana's case rolled around, he was under as much suspicion as Edgeworth, if not more. Years later he was disbarred for this suspicion, under an investigation conducted by Kristoph Gavin.

--

_Third, Redone._

Phoenix Wright's first case was to defend Larry Butz.

He said something about not being able to let someone go without a proper defence. Besides, he was a friend of his, and while he was always a troublemaker, he knew he couldn't have done anything like murder.

When Mia asked, he said that he knew what it was like to be picked on for something he didn't do. He was accused of stealing in grade school, he explained. Even the teachers thought he did it, and it was only because Larry had spoken up that he didn't get as much trouble as it could have been. Instead, they got into trouble together.

Larry was the one to tell him that Edgeworth was in the same class as they were. Phoenix was bowled over, especially when he found out that Edgeworth had always wanted to be a defence attorney, and not a prosecutor. He supposed time really did change things.

He soon found out why.

--

_Second, Redone._

_Miles Edgeworth Chooses Death_

This never changed, even though she got tired of seeing it by now. There was no reason why she should get tired of anything, since she should have remembered none of this. Indeed, she was sure that there were many things she had forgotten, things that no longer happened. Even more troubling was the fact that things were starting to change out of her control, as if she was no longer the one causing these changes. Had these changes begun to change her, instead?

Phoenix Wright was crushed to find out that his friend in law (literally) had done this to himself. He thought they were friends, that they had gone through thick and thin together. Of course their first meeting wasn't under the best circumstances -- Edgeworth prosecuting the case that would eventually end up with Phoenix as the accused -- but after Edgeworth saved him during the Steel Samurai case, he doggedly chased him down to defend him in return on Christmas. Together, they managed to discover that the person behind the entire case had been Edgeworth's mentor, Manfred von Karma.

They even managed to take on the Chief of Police. Of course, there was a lot of suspicion against Edgeworth during this, but he thought that they managed to shake those suspicions, so why?

--

_First, Redone._

They knew each other, from coincidence to intertwined fates, whether they knew it or not.

They would live to see each separate, and whether they would join back again, no one knew.

--

_Fifth, Final._

For the first time ever, Miles Edgeworth arrived to school late.

He was embarrassed to pieces that such a thing occurred, but he could not rightfully provide a proper explanation as to why this happened. For some reason, he followed the directions on the paper in hsi journal that day, which said to arrive to school thirty minutes late. It turned out that there was some sort of major traffic accident that occurred around that time, he found out later, and if he had not done so, he might have been caught in the middle of said accident with whiplash that could keep him from attending school at all.

So when the next day that the class mock trial occurred, he thought that this must be why he was here. To defend, just as his father did.

What he didn't know was that one action would change the world.

--

Prologue.

It is commonly thought that time flows like the roots of a tree, downward. That from our present, many possible actions branch off into many more branches, all leading to the future.

But what of the past?

What if it was truly like a tree, where the trunk extends into branches upwards, that our past is only reformed, based on the reality we perceive today? Instead of puzzle pieces being rearranged to form a different result, the result is formed and the arrangement shifts automatically. Recollection functions that way -- a memory is reconstructed every single time it is recalled, rather than looking at a picture, already formed. But even looking at pictures doesn't work the way we assume it does. Colors fade with time, people re-interpret history differently.

Is this change in the past the truth? Or is it a misconception, because what we believed, correct or mistaken, caused us to be here?

What if one changed the past by changing the present?

---

Author's Notes: By this point, it should be obvious why I'm writing the notes at the end of the story, rather than the beginning. Least to say, this was inspired by finishing the game Braid. I was thinking of doing this for another series, since this works for just about any series under the sun, but Gyakuten Saiban is too good to let go of. That being said, this was really hard to write after a while -- going from point a to point b is not the easiest thing for me. I'm surprised I even made it.

Currently this is unedited.


End file.
